with Davison Muropa
A lot of countries are now battling with having to undo what they considered progressive developments decades and centuries ago.
The wrong trees planted in the wrong place can be a catastrophe.
The Western Cape of South Africa is famous for its ecosystem called Fynbos.
It has over 9,000 plant species; many of which are found nowhere else on earth.
This ecosystem supports a great diversity of wild life including insects, birds, reptiles and small mammals.
The Fynbos is critical to the City of Cape Town which in 2018 was facing disaster.
After 3 years of drought Cape Tow was days away from no water and it had to restrict water usage by residents to 50 litres a day.
Cape Town gets its water from the Fynbos System in the mountains that surround the city.
The Cape Town Fynbos can cope with intermittent rainfall since it receives and captures moisture from regular coastal fog when cold air from the ocean condenses over the warm land.
But over the centuries inversive species of flora have been introduced to this finely tuned landscape, upsetting the balance.
Alien plants like pine trees were introduced from Europe and Australia for timber.
These species with their deep tap root systems use more water than the native species.
Now about 70% of the CT watershed is invaded by alien plants drinking vast amounts of water before it can get to water reservoirs.
Now Cape Town has engaged a special trained team which goes to the most inaccessible places to cut down the pine trees which drink as much as 30 litres of water each per day thus loosing the region 55 billion litres of water each year.
There is no quick fix with this as the inversive seeds can lie dormant for many years.
Fortunately the rains came in 2018 averting the water crisis.
The question of eucalyptus trees in Zimbabwe is still under discussion
Till next week, be blessed.
*Davison Muropa is a Zimbabwean based in Birmingham, UK.
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